Five Times to Save Chase and Cameron, and One Time That Did
by Illbehisangel10
Summary: Five choices that could have saved Chase and Cameron's relationship and one choice that actually would. Set in seasons 3 through 8. A series of AU stories to give this couple the chances at a happy ending. Each number is a new story where the previous story did not happen.


**A/N:**

**Five Choices that could have changed Chase and Cameron's relationship and the one choice that actually did. **

**ChasexCameron**

**Five times story. It's my first five times _ and the one time _ story. This seems to be a pretty common trend. I'm sorry if someone has already written one for Chase and Cameron. I'm a little new to the fandom. Enjoy!**

1.

"I want more" Chase stood there apprehensively. He was fully aware that what he'd just said could very well bring down their entire relationship. But was it really worth the relationship they had if he wanted it to be so much more than that?

"I was hoping you'd take the hint and not bring it up again. She stood there, clearly pissed off. She was enjoying their arrangement. Nothing about this made sense. She was the doctor who all but cried with the patients at their bedside, who would defend every relationship from House's ever-present admonishment "everybody lies." And yet she was the one without feelings here. It didn't make any damn sense.

"No, Allison." His use of her first name had stunned her, that was sure from the changing facial expression. "I'm not going to just drop it. We've been at this for weeks and I know what I want out of this. You said that you chose me because I was the least likely person you work with that you could fall in love with. But what about me? What about how I feel about you? When I said that us sleeping together after the first time couldn't happen again, I wasn't just talking about your feelings! Dammit!" He ran is hands through his hair and turned around. He paced two steps away, collecting his thoughts and then turned back toward her.

"Chase- "

"Robert. With as much as we've been through, if you're going to break my heart, at least use my first name." He'd moved to stand back in front of her now. "You can't tell me that you don't feel anything. You're the most compassionate person I know and you can look me in the eye and say that the past few weeks have meant nothing to you at all?"

"Okay, Robert." The name obviously felt awkward to her. "What do you want me to say? I don't feel the same, okay? And even if I did, we couldn't do it. We work together. Emotionless sex is one thing, but an actual relationship? That would kill our working relationship if it ever went south."

"That's an awful lot of thinking about the consequences of a relationship for someone who doesn't want to be in one." Chase was smirking at her, sure that he'd caught her. Sure that she'd admit to feeling something now.

"Or maybe I had those same thoughts and that was how I rationalized getting over House." Ouch. That was a suckerpunch. She knew how much that hurt him. He'd even made some jealous remarks about her and House's relationship when they had just started "seeing" each other. He looked to the ground as the air rushed out of him as though she had actually punched him in the gut.

She sighed heavily. "Cha-Robert. I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. I'm just not in a good place for a relationship right now. What we've been doing is all I'm ready for dealing with. I had the real thing and I don't know how to keep moving past that. No one has come close since him and I just don't know how to let that go."

"You could try." Chase had regained his composure a little. He reached for her hand and took it as a good sign when she didn't pull away. "You could try with me. I don't need a big commitment right away, hell I may not want one for years. I just want to know that this means more to you than just sex. I want to take you out to dinner. I want to hold your hand. I want to send flowers to the diagnostics office for you just because it's Tuesday. I want to be the reason that you're smiling when you leave the hospital. Give me a chance to prove that it doesn't have to be a heartbreak or complicated. Please."

"Chase, I'll see you tomorrow, okay? Let's just leave it at that."

* * *

><p>She walked away and got into her car. Chase stared after her the entire way.<p>

Chase walked into his dark apartment, alone. He set the bag of take out on the counter and toed out of his shoes while loosening his tie. How in the world had he thought that was a good idea? He knew she liked their relationship as it stood. He knew she didn't want him to mess with it.

He leaned his back against the door and muttered to himself, _stupidstupidstupidstupid_

He felt more than heard the knock at the door at his back. Great, what now? He thought. But as the opened the door, there stood Cameron. She looked beautiful even as she looked as though she was ready to bolt

"Hi." It was all he could say. He leaned against the door frame and waited for her to speak.

She let out a long sigh before speaking, "So, Robert, tell me more about this 'flowers just because it's Tuesday' thing." He smiled. She smiled.

Chase straightened away from the door and pulled her to him for a kiss.

2.

Allison Cameron had just had a very trying day. Her heart went out to those kids. Their father had been unwittingly dosing them with hormones that made them sick. Not that she felt bad enough for them to excuse what the brother had done. Chase had been right, she shouldn't have encouraged it.

As she walked into the locker room, that aforementioned doctor was just hanging up his lab coat. They shared a quick, weary smile, it had been a trying day for all. She walked past him and noticed a burst of color above her locker. She smiled as she read the card, "Not Stolen." Well, that pretty much meant they were from Chase.

They both knew that he had feelings for her. He had pressed. She had rejected. What Chase didn't know was that she actually did share his feelings, she just didn't know how to react to them. So she had turned to her tried and true reaction for most of her life: running from them. It had killed her to say those things to him that night. How strained their work relationship had become as a result also killed her. True, she loved the pace and the thrill of her job, but Chase and Foreman were what really made this job enjoyable. You had to have some fun with your coworkers or else this field would drive you crazy.

She cradled the bouquet in her arms and turned to face him.

"They're beautiful" Chase smiled, but said nothing. The next move was hers and they both knew it. He had put his heart in her hands, again. Would she crush it?

"I thought about what you said." He continued to look at her expectantly. She took a deep breath. "I've thought a lot about what you said, actually. This would have the potential to destroy the team. Three years of working together, getting to know how we each function which molds into how to best save a patient, all for nothing if we let this end badly. So, no, I don't want a relationship with you. But there's another part of me that is screaming at me." She sat down on the bench and set the flowers next to her. She kept her eyes focused on a bolt in the bench instead of meeting his eyes. "It's telling me that you and I work so well together, and not just at work, that not giving this a shot could be the biggest mistake of my life."

Chase straightened up from his position against the wall, "What?" His face displayed shock. He didn't approach her. He looked as though he didn't believe what he'd just heard.

She stood up and crossed the rest of the room to stand right in front of him. "If you're willing to put up with all that I come with, then I want to try this. I'm willing to see where it goes."

He smiled down at her and reached for her hand. "Well, I don't know where it goes in the long run, but how about for tonight, it goes out of a nice dinner?"

She returned the smile, "for tonight, that sounds pretty perfect."

3. Chase had actually lost his job. House was known for playing games. They all knew it. They all were pretty sure that House had been the one to call about Foreman's job to mess up that opportunity. He seemed to want to keep the team together. No one on the team could understand why he wasn't offering Chase the job back.

Chase sat at the bar, enjoying his food as a "free" man for the first time in three years. He had already accepted that House wasn't going to call him and pretend the entire incident had never happened, so he was going to enjoy this freedom, live off of what he had saved up, and find a new job. This new job would probably be far, far away from here so that the events of the last three years, his father's passing, House's games, and his relationship with Cameron, could all stay here and he could really move on.

Then Cameron walked into the bar.

All she wanted to do was talk. All she wanted to do was to check up on him. She wasn't there to finally cave into to his idea of them actually being together. He almost wished it was Tuesday so that he'd have one last shot at saying he liked her. Instead, he decided to apologize for that entire idea in the first place. It had obviously gotten on her nerves and gotten him nowhere with her. At his apology she almost looked… disappointed? This gave him one last leap of courage. After this, he would certainly give up, but what could one more shot hurt? "Would you like to stay and have dinner with me?"

Cameron smiled, "I thought apologizing for the 'It's Tuesday' thing meant you were giving up on me?"

"Well, I figured one more try couldn't hurt." Chase chuckled, "If you don't want to have dinner with me, you could just join a former coworker for dinner before he makes plans for moving on with his life."

Cameron hopped up on to the next bar stool and asked the bartender for a coke. "Hmmm, this former co-worker that I could join sounds interesting, can you tell me who it is?" She smiled at Chase; a sweet smile laced with the slightest bit of sass. Was she actually opening the door for him to flirt? Was she really going to join him for dinner?

He turned in his seat to face her, "Well, he's Australian, he put up with House for years, and was recently fired." He held up his glass in a mock salute on that last remark.

Cameron laughed and inched her seat closer to his, "You know, I think I know who you mean. You forgot to say devilishly handsome, clever, and great in bed. What would this former coworker say to moving this dinner over to my place?"

Chase stood and threw some money on the counter, "well, I think he'd say, 'lead the way.'" Cameron joined her hand with his and they walked out of the bar together. Once they were out the door, Cameron stopped him.

"Hey, Chase?" She turned so that she was facing him.

"Yeah?" She still had time to back out. She still had time to laugh in his face and say she wasn't serious. Not that he thought she actually would, but his mind came up with about fifty worst-case scenarios in the time it took her to smile at him and begin her answer.

She reached up and ran a hand through his hair, "It's not quite Tuesday, but I don't feel like waiting: I like you."

4. "If you don't want to tell… but I could help. Whatever this is, it's eating away at you. We could get past it together." Chase was leaning forward, clearly struggling with what to tell his wife. His beautiful, caring, compassionate wife who would never wittingly hurt a patient. How could he tell her? "I love you no matter what."

Could he risk that not being true? He would love her no matter what, he knew that, but would she really be able to keep that promise? After what he did, could anyone? It took him several tries to actually start to speak.

"We lose patients sometimes. One of those patients, Dibala, we didn't actually lose. I killed him." It was most terrifying to meet her eyes than it had been to know that he could lose his medical license and face prison because of this action. This could take away her love for him. She was obviously shocked.

She pulled away her hand and just stared at him. He didn't try to reach for her hand again, what was the point? "What do you mean you killed him? You killed him, killed him? You made a mistake, right? You meant to do something and made a mistake that ended up killing him?"

He put his head in his hands. She was trying to rationalize what he was confessing. She didn't want to think he was capable of this. "No, I mean I knew what I was doing would kill him and I did it anyway."

He could feel the weight of the couch shift as she stood up. Was she just going to walk out on him? He couldn't blame her for it if she did.

"Chase." He looked up at her. She had her hands on her hips and looked as though she could start to hyperventilate at any moment. "I don't know how you expect me to react to that. With that answer, it would be easier to deal with if you had been having an affair! What do you expect me to say?"

He hung his head again, he couldn't look at her. "I don't have any expectations for your reaction or for what you should say. It's been more than just guilt that's kept me from telling you. I hate myself for it, there is no reason for you to feel anything but disgust toward me." This was it, he was going to lose her. It would be entirely his fault. He heard her heels click across the floor. He heard her keys jingle in her hand. He looked up to see her at the door.

She had tears rolling down her face. "I love you and I'll be back. I need to think. I need to process. I'll be back." She pulled the door open and hurried out, leaving him on their sofa.

* * *

><p>When she pulled the door open and leaned back against it, she felt exhausted. A few hours ago, her make-up had been running down her face, but that point was long gone and none of it remained anymore. She had taken her keys, but hadn't felt up to driving. She had just walked, for hours.<p>

The first thing she noticed was Chase's form curled up on the couch. This wasn't new. He had been sporadically deciding to sleep out here since he started acting strangely- since he killed Dibala- she had to correct herself. She now knew why he'd been so off. If she had made the same choice, she would have been acting oddly as well.

But that was the issue, she never would have done it. She never could have done what her husband had chosen to do. All that time walking had given her time to sort out her feelings. The problem was that she could sort the feelings as many different ways as she wanted, but there were still so many to confront.

She felt angry that he had taken a patient's life. She felt betrayed and hurt that he hadn't trusted her with this information earlier. She felt disbelief at herself when she'd briefly wondered if she could still feel safe with him (that one was quickly resolved. Of course she could; he had killed a murderer, not exactly the average patient or person.) She was unbelievably upset with House, as his ideas of playing God seemed to have actually gotten to Robert. That certainly had influenced him. Now she could add annoyance to the list, among the others she didn't even want to put a name to. She was annoyed that even after telling her what was wrong, he still was choosing to sleep out here.

Not tonight, damn it. If they were going to fix their relationship from this, they were going to act like husband and wife. She walked over to him and knelt down beside him. She was hesitant to wake him as he looked as though he was finally asleep, which was something she knew he hadn't been doing a lot of. "Robert. Robert wake up, I'm home and I can't go to bed until we talk more."

As soon as she'd said his name, his eyes had snapped open. "Allison!" He rolled over and pulled her to him. He sighed deeply when she returned the hug. "I love you."

She pulled back and moved her hand to the side of his face. "I love you too. I said right before you told me that I love you no matter what. That's true. We have a lot to discuss, but I'm not going anywhere. Come on, We have a lot to talk about tonight before we go to bed and we will have a lot to talk about for months to come, but for now, I need to be your wife and I need you to come with me.

Chase got up and followed her to their bedroom to have the first of many, many talks repairing their relationship, and, in his view at least, his soul.

5.

"JUST TELL ME THE TRUTH!" Robert screamed at his wife. He needed to know this.

"About what?" Allison was in tears. The urge to take her into his arms until she stopped was almost so overwhelming that he could have backed out of his question, but he didn't.

"Did you ever love me?" He was close to tears himself. He loved her with everything he had. He wanted to do anything he could to make her happy and give her the marriage and husband she deserved. He needed to know if she had ever felt the same.

"Robert, of course I did. I still do!" She was crying in full force now. She had covered her mouth like she'd just made a horrible admission instead of declaring her love for the man she had married.

Robert jumped up on the exam table, "so it is my fault. I've spent months wondering where I made it go bad. One day I realized that maybe you never actually loved me. That would make it not my fault at all. But thank you, for answering honestly anyway."

Allison joined him on his perch, "It is not your fault. Everything you said about my first husband is true. His death messed me up more than I already had to have been in the first place to have married a dying man. I pushed you out of my life. I'm a complete mess. I'm unfixable."

He looked into her eyes. This was it. He could now sign her papers. He had his answers. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you think you're unfixable. I only see someone who I would stand by and help her to fix anything she thinks is wrong with herself. And I'm sorry we couldn't work." He walked over to the envelope containing the documents he was hoping to never see in his life.

"Chase wait! Don't sign them yet. What if we… gave it another chance? I've had my time away. I think a part of me came back to get these signed because I wanted to see you again. I wanted to see if I still wanted to go through with it." She had her hand on his wrist, his hand still in his pocket where he'd gone to grab a pen.

He looked at her expectantly. "And?"

She returned his look, "and I think if anyone can fix me, it's you."

*ONE*

Chase glanced down the hall of Princeton Plainsboro and noticed a familiar face. All thoughts of his current case, of House's issues, of anything other than going to visit this woman fled his mind.

Allison Cameron stood at the end of the hall, holding a blonde child.

He all but ran down the hall to her. "Allison. What are you doing here?"

She smiled at the toddler on her hip and then up at Chase. "I heard about House. I wanted to make it for the funeral, but I couldn't get here in time. Chase, I've been wrestling with this for a long time. We have some things to discuss."

Chase looked from the baby to Allison and back. The child looked to be between a year and a year and a half old. If he was right… "It's not my office, we can talk down here." He turned and quickly walked down the hall, holding the glass door open for her. She sat down at the chair that House had so often humiliated them all from. "What is it?"

"Robert, I saw you doing the math. You know what I'm going to tell you. This- she's yours."

Chase stood there in stunned silence. Yes, he had done the math. Yes, he had spent the walk down the hall thinking that she might tell him that, but it still didn't prepare him to actually hear the words. Hundreds of emotions ran through him at her words. Anger was obviously there. She had kept his child from him for over a year, but that was not going to be helpful here. And he wanted to hold his daughter.

"Can, umm, can I hold her?"

Allison laughed, "of course." She shifted the baby around in her arms and carefully made the transition over to Chase's arms. "I'm sorry. I know that doesn't come close to covering it, but I've actually got two reasons for being here. When I first found out I was pregnant, I tried to contact you. I got House instead. In the way that he always just knew things, he guessed why I was calling. He's been helping me with money to take care of her in exchange for me not screwing up your life, as he put it, by dragging you into this."

Chase's head snapped up. He had been focusing on memorizing every inch of his daughter, but this statement caught his attention. "He thought that knowing I have a child would be screwing up my life?" He pushed the anger back down, he didn't want to alarm his daughter.

"Yes. He said that for the first time in your time working for him, your thoughts were finally not clouded by me and I needed to keep it that way if I cared about you at all. So I did. Then I heard what happened. I wanted to come back. I hadn't wanted to bring her with me. I wanted to talk to you about her first before introducing you, but then my babysitting plans kind of fell through. I've been seeing someone for a while, but when I told him that my old boss had passed away and that I wanted to come back, he accused me of still being in love with you and walked out."

As much as Chase wanted to hear this explanation, this little girl was occupying most of his mind. He would have go over all of this again when this perfect little person he had helped make wasn't distracting him. He smiled at her and she smiled back, he didn't even hear what Allison had said.

"Chase? Did you hear me? I said maybe if you're not doing anything for dinner, we could meet up and see if he was right. I know we have a lot to work through, but I think Princeton is big enough for both of us as doctors again and I'd like to give her a shot at having an actual family."

**A/N:**** I hope you liked it. I know it kind of got progressively worse, but I haven't seen all of the episodes. I just skipped to the parts of each episode I re-wrote to see what I thought was important. Also, I'm going to claim ignorance for the last episode even though I know Cameron's baby isn't that old. I want it to be Chase's and give them a possibility of getting back together.**


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